


doc, there's a hole where something was

by monstermash



Series: the hand in the garden [2]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: M/M, Past Brainwashing, Past Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-12
Updated: 2016-12-06
Packaged: 2018-08-14 15:28:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8019319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monstermash/pseuds/monstermash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn't remember everything, but he remembers enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is just gonna be a bunch of memories that charon gets back over time though he never gets all of them back (i'm trying to keep the memories he does get back vague)
> 
> i also tried to keep the violence vague and not detailed
> 
> tags will also be updated as this goes along and chapters might not always be in chronological order

“What is your name?”

“My name is ------- --------.”

The cattle prod sparks to life and is thrust into his side. He bites his tongue until the taste of iron floods his mouth.

“What is your name?”

“------- --------.”

The prod jabs into his ribs again. This time he cries out in pain.

\---

His friends drag him out to a dancehall to celebrate his recent promotion. It’s merely an excuse for them to get drunk and have fun before they ship out to Anchorage, but he indulges them; they won’t have many chances to cut loose on the frontlines.

“Ah, c’mon, -------, have a drink, ask someone to dance!” 

“Yeah, there’s gotta be someone here who catches your eye.”

He rolls his eyes, but asks a girl – black hair and almond shaped eyes – who looks like she’s been waiting all night to dance. She seems nice, very enthusiastic about her college major, but he has no interest in her, not like that. She’s also making moon eyes at a girl across the dance floor so he's not worried about her being interested in him.

His obvious lack of romantic interest in anyone doesn’t deter his friends though; they’ve all been trying to set him up with a nice girl or guy since high school.

He might meet someone someday, who will catch his eye, but he is in no rush; he’s young and has all the time in the world to find that somebody.

\---

They’ve been locked in small, cement cells by the people in the hazmat suits; at least he’s no longer strapped down, he doesn’t know about the others though. His sides are sore and everything hurts. He’s not exactly sure what they’re trying to do, but he does know that they want him and the others to lose their sense of self.

He won’t give them the satisfaction.

“My name is ------- --------. My name is ------- --------.”

He repeats this over and over, for hours on end like a prayer, a mantra, until it doesn’t even sound like words anymore. 

He wonders if his ma is still alive somewhere, he doesn’t think he could bear it if she wasn’t, so he hopes with his entire being that she is.

There isn’t much else he can do.

\---

“-------, could you get the mail?”

“Sure thing, ma,” he calls out and climbs up the basement stairs, leaving the tools he had been using to fix the water heater where they were. Stepping out of the house, he inhales the scent of fresh air and flowers, and walks down the driveway to the mailbox. The summer heat hasn’t let up at all, but vacation is almost over, soon he’ll be back in school.

As he retrieves the mail, briefly looking through what they got, he notices a red, fancy looking car. Weird, he’s been seeing that same car driving by lately, and they haven’t gotten any new neighbors. He shrugs and returns to the house, having to duck his head on the way in; he’s too tall for the house, too tall for most places really, but at least his height gives him an advantage in gym class when they play basketball.

“Thank you, dear,” his ma says when he hands her the stack of envelopes. He grabs a glass of water as she sorts through the mail; one pile ads, another is letters from friends, the final one is for bills. His ma doesn’t work, hasn’t for as long as he can remember, so how she’s pays the bills he has no clue.

She stops her sorting, however, when she comes across one letter in particular. Her bright blue eyes go wide and she hesitantly opens it, hands shaking slightly. He looks at her with concern as she reads it and her face twists further and further in shock.

“Ma?” That seems to snap her out of it.

“It’s nothing, -------.” She swallows thickly and puts the letter in her back pocket, her hands smoothing out nonexistent wrinkles in her clothes.

She’s skittish for the rest of the week. He’s relieved when she finally calms down. The relief is gone when the fancy red car stops in their driveway. The man who steps out of it claims to be his father.

His ma screams at the man to leave, “Haven’t you caused enough trouble for us?”

The man goes.

He comes back again and again.

\---

He and the others are escorted by armed guards to what looks like an old indoor pool. One of the others, a woman, is led into the drained pool first. They tell her to wait so she does. A haggard looking person – it’s hard to tell if it is a man or a woman – is brought in through the door on the opposite side of the room and is pushed into the drained pool as well.

They are then ordered by one of the hazmats to fight. The woman wins easily. Her knuckles are bloody and raw but she won. Then they order her to finish off her opponent; this causes her to pause. They order her again and use a cattle prod to encourage her. The opponent begs for their life but the woman does not grant it.

She looks shaken when it is over.

Then they bring in another opponent, and then another. One after one she fights and then kills them. He and the others watch in silence as she does. Her blonde hair is matted with blood and she cries the entire time.

They give her a break and order for someone else to take her place in blood spattered pool.

They choose him.

He cries the entire time too.

\---

“What is your name?”

This old routine again, but things in his head have started to blur together. He doesn’t remember things as clearly as he used to. But that’s okay, so long as he never loses the resentment and hate he feels for these strangers in hazmat suits who took him and the others; so long as he doesn’t lose this purpose he’s given himself.

“I… My name… My name is ------- --------.”

His answer earns him another shock to the ribs.

\---

Anchorage is so cold that he worries that he might be frozen to the inside of his armor. There’s nothing but snow and gray skies as far as the eye can see; his squad jokes that if they ever get lost in a snow storm all they have to do is look for his bright red hair.

The only time he feels warm anymore is when he sleeps, and when he sleeps he dreams of brown eyes that feel like the warmth of summer. Some days he doesn’t want to wake up, to face the snow covered land, because it feels so nice to be warm for once, even if it is only in his dreams.

\---

The armed guards and the hazmats usher him and the others into one of those large freezers used in delis. They’re left in there for what seems like days but is only hours, in nothing more than thin pants and shirts. The hazmats are testing them for durability.

Some of the others curl in on themselves, shivering, while he and the rest keep moving, keep their blood flowing. When the freezer door is finally opened five of them have been frozen solid, died from the cold, like human sized icicles. 

The ones who froze are left in the dark freezer.

\---

The radiation from the bombs finally catches up with them. They’ve all been sick for days, too weak to move. Instead of being locked up in their cells they’ve been moved to one large room, like a makeshift containment area.

When his skin starts to come off in patches he thinks he must be delirious from radiation sickness, has to be, but when he sees the others losing skin as well he knows it is real. But for every one of them who starts losing skin and hair at least eight others die from the radiation.

He sneezes so hard at one point that most of his nose comes off.

After weeks of this, the horrifying transformation is done. The only ones left are him and twenty others. They are finally released from the room and put back in their cells; he vomits once he’s locked in by the four concrete walls he’s grown so accustomed to, the smell of the dead still stuck in his mind and what remains of his nostrils.

\---

They’re brought to the fighting pits again, but this time instead of being forced to kill off people weakened by radiation sickness they’re pitted against each other. At first it is just sparring, but then they are told to kill each other until only ten remain.

The pits turn into a bloodbath; the violence that took place, which he took part in, is burned into his mind. He scrubs his rotten, marred skin raw, unable to get rid of the sensation of blood and gore covering his hands.

He knows he’s losing himself more and more each day. It’s a struggle to even remember that he has a name anymore.

\---

They lost three others in the past 36 hours; they suddenly lost their minds, attacking anyone who didn’t have rotten skin like them. Him and the remaining six others watched impassively as the three ‘ferals’ tore a guard apart with nothing more than their teeth and bare hands.

They also watched as the ferals were put down like rabid animals.

He supposes that in a way, they were.

\---

“What is your name?”

“I don’t know.”

There’s a shock to his hands. He bites down on the inside of his cheek to keep from crying out.

“What is your name?”

“I… I do not have one.”

\---

On the shooting range they’re all trained to use a variety of weapons, but he prefers to use shotguns, if he was allowed to have a preference. The hazmats make note of which weapons they all tend to gravitate towards. One hazmat in particular praises him on his skills with the shotgun, patting him on the head in the most patronizing way possible.

He wants to break the hazmat’s hand, but knows that any form of retaliation will be dealt with excessive force.

So he does nothing.

\---

Time holds no meaning in this place. For all he knows they have been trapped here for decades. The hazmats are asking him questions. He does not know why they ask when they already know the answer.

“What is your name?”

“I have no name.”

“What is your purpose?”

“To obey and protect the one who holds my contract.”

“Is failure an option?”

“No.”

The hazmats nod at one another, one of them turns to a guard and says, “This one is ready, prepare him for the auction and bring in the next one.”

\---

Charon normally doesn’t smoke – that’s Yasha’s thing, though he’s cut back recently – but when he gets those fragments of memories back his hands twitch with the need to do something, so he smokes.

He’ll sit on the platform that holds their house, legs hanging over the side, and look out over the town as the sun rises (these memories always come back to him in the dark of the early morning; he doesn’t know why). Charon tries to work through them, tries to see if he can remember more, but that’s all there is. He hates that he gets back more of the bad than the good; he could tell you about all the ways he learned how to kill people down in the pits but he couldn’t tell you what his own mother looked like.

Yasha tells him that’s normal; he had more years of bad than good so of course he’d remember more of one than the other. Doesn’t mean Charon has to like it though.

Remembering things is… painful. It always leaves him feeling raw and like he’s been cracked open like an egg. It is also incredibly disorienting. At one point he had been so confused by a returning memory he thought he was still in the pits; so confused in fact that he had attacked Yasha, who had been trying to calm him down. 

Charon had been so horrified by what he had done that he stress smoked his way through an entire pack of cigarettes. 

That was another thing too, the more his brainwashing and old programming broke down the more he became… this. Not who he once was before the bombs dropped, but he’s not completely who he was after that either. He’s a weird in between of both now.

Charon feels so lost in this whirlwind of reflection and introspection and memories that don’t always have context that he’s glad that Yasha seems to know when to step in.

Yasha sits behind him; chest pressed against his back, arms wrapped around Charon’s middle, and he’ll hook his chin over one of Charon’s shoulders. Yasha is silent, but his presence is enough to put the ghoul at ease. 

It is enough.


	2. Chapter 2

Sometimes he forgets that Yasha wasn’t always the Lone Wanderer, that the human had had a job that didn’t involve guns (well technically it did, just not the kind that is commonly found out in the wasteland). Yasha had gotten another message from Amata, though this time it was about picking up some equipment that Yasha had left behind.

“We did not leave any weapons behind in the vault. I checked before we left.”

“Not that kind of equipment, Charon. She means my tattooing stuff.”

“Whoever thought it was a good idea to give you the ability to do anything permanent to someone’s skin obviously was not in their right mind.”

“Oh please, when you see my work you’ll be amazed.”

\---

On the day one of his friends turned 18 they asked him to come with them to get a tattoo.

“I’ll go with you but I’m not getting one.”

“Aw, why not? You’re not scared of needles are you?”

“No, but if I want to enlist I can’t have tattoos.”

His friend pouts but they get over it soon enough, the excitement of getting a tattoo drawing their attention. While his friend is sitting in a chair and getting inked (they chose a ridiculous looking blue cartoon penguin), he looks at the designs on the walls of the shop.

The ones on display are beautifully done and he’s taken in by one in particular; a design of blue and yellow roses with a thick outline but the detail work is done like calligraphy. Tattoos aren’t his thing, but they are nice to look at.

\---

Charon does end up being amazed by Yasha’s work; enough people in Megaton and Rivet City seem to be enthralled by the idea of tattoos that he gets to see the human in his element. The first work of Yasha’s he gets to see is done for a group of people called Tunnel Snakes out in Rivet City. Yasha grins when the leader of the group talks to him about the design and price.

After that word spreads fast about his skill. Of course he notices how Charon has taken to watching him work.

“You want me to teach you?” Yasha asks him with a smile.

He practices on paper first. Yasha would have had him practice on something called a practice skin; he hadn’t thought to ask for that from Amata. Once his lines area no longer shaky, Yasha offers to let Charon practice tattooing on him.

“It’ll be fine, I trust you to not give me something weird. Besides, it’s not like anyone but you will see them anyway.”

The first tattoo he gives him is the ridiculous blue cartoon penguin on his ankle; Yasha laughs and says he loves it. When he’s built up more confidence in his skill he gives him the blue and yellow roses from his memory; once it is finished Yasha pulls him into a kiss.


	3. Chapter 3

They got two of the three keys for Crowley; Ted Strayer had been easily talked out of the key but they had to hand over a bunch of caps for Dukov’s. Yasha had muttered “Dukov, more like _durak"_ as he paid for the key.

Only one more key to get and then they had to end Tenpenny. Charon was more than okay with that, especially because of the Talon Company contract Tenpenny and Burke had placed on Yasha’s head.

\---

It was surprisingly easy to get into Tenpenny's suite, the guard falling for the lie Yasha told with ease and certainty. Easier still to get out onto the balcony and aim a gun at the old man's head. Tenpenny had tried to bargain with Yasha, but to no avail.

"If you did not want this to happen then you should not have put a bounty on his head," Charon said from where he was leaning against one of the balcony's columns.

Tenpenny looked like he was about to say something, perhaps insult the ghoul or call for help, but Yasha pulled the trigger before he could. The old man's head snapped backwards and that was that. Of course, there was uncertainty in Yasha's face now. He was probably thinking that he may have made the wrong choice. Charon walks over to him, wraps and arm around the human's waist and places a kiss on his cheek.

"You made the right choice. Tenpenny was far from being a good person."

\---

Getting the final key was a hassle; Dave wouldn’t even talk about it until after the election. Charon could see Yasha becoming frustrated with the older man and when Yasha got frustrated, really truly frustrated with someone, he got an intense spiteful streak.

So instead of just collecting the votes Yasha had decided to convince Rosie to run in the election.

“You're right! Dave's just been pushing me around! It's time for a change!”

So much for just collecting votes and getting the hell out of there.

\---

Dave was a sore loser and threw a fit when the results came in. Charon couldn’t believe that the man just stormed off, leaving his family behind just because he was no longer in charge.

For a man in his late forties he acted like a spoiled brat.

\---

“You can’t keep me from seeing my son!”

“He was never your son! You just let your father pay me off like I was some- some prostitute, and then you left town like you were told to because you’re spineless!”

“We were young! I thought dad knew what was best!”

“We may have been young, but that doesn’t change the fact that you were, and still are, a god damn coward.”

\---

“Wow, I didn’t think they’d get married this quickly,” Yasha says, stunned after Angela invited them to her wedding. Charon grunts as he continues to look through Flak’s selection of guns and ammo.

“You gave her Ant Queen pheromones, what did you expect?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t think they’d work this quickly. It’s been what? Four days since I gave the pheromones to her?”

Yasha sidles up next to him, looking through the guns and ammo as well.

“So… Do you wanna go to the wedding?”

“I am not a fan of them, but if you want to go then sure.”

Yasha smiles at his answer and Charon figures that sitting through one wedding will be fine.

\---

He hates this. Hates being surrounded by rich strangers, hates this suit he has to wear, but most of all he hates that he’s at the wedding for the man who had abandoned his ma and him. The man looks so damn happy to see him and his ma and introduces the lady he’s marrying; she doesn’t look pleased at all to see him, her fiance’s bastard, nor his mother.

He and his ma are quiet during the ceremony, faces neutral as the strangers around them grin and shed tears of happiness. It’s suffocating. When it is over he thinks that that’s the end of it, but his ma tells him they have to go to the reception as well.

At least they’ll get free food out of it.

It is late into the night, the party still in full swing, when the man comes up to him with a big grin on his face.

“I’m really happy that you and your mother were able to make it, son.”

“I am not your son.” This statement of fact seems to hurt the man, at least to some degree.

“What do you mean? Of course you’re my son.”

“Not in the way that matters. We might share the same blood but other than that we’re strangers; I don’t know you and you don’t know me.”

“Well that can change once we get to know each other,” the man tries but he cuts him off.

“You don’t get it. I don’t want to get to know you. I didn’t even want to come here, but ma insisted. So after tonight, stop coming by the house. Stop trying to see us. We don’t want to see you.”

And that finally seems to get through to the man. The man slinks off into the crowd, dejectedly, while he returns to the table he and his ma are seated at. She’s absolutely knackered so he’ll have to drive them home.

“I can’t believe he got married, -------,” his ma sobs as he helps her out of the car and into the house. “I can’t believe he got married and I… I waited for him to grow a pair and apologize for leaving us! I waited for him to come back and say that he’s gonna stay!”

She’s crying by the time he helps her into her room. 

“I hate him,” she drunkenly slurs, “But I hate myself more for still being in love with him! I was a fool for thinking that he might’ve changed.”

He squeezes her shoulder as he pulls the comforter over her. 

“Your mother’s a fool, -------,” her speech is slurring even more now. “And your father is a coward. Don’ be like us, -------.”

Once she’s passed out, he leaves a glass of water on her bedside table and heads to his own bed.

The man never shows up to the house again.

\---

Angela and Diego’s wedding is short, no longer than maybe 40 minutes. Her father cries as he gives her away, but the couple is beaming at each other. Once the ceremony is done the crowd disperses.

Charon still isn’t big on weddings, but if they make Yasha happy then he wouldn’t mind sitting through a few more.


	4. Chapter 4

Charon sees a few of the others every now and then, out of the corner of his eye. They are not really there of course and he knows that, but it still unnerves him to see them. The others never do anything, just stand in empty doorways with dead looking eyes, completely silent.

Until they’re not.

At first it starts off with quiet, barely there gibberish, easy to ignore, but then it escalates; the ghosts – hallucinations, whatever they are – start repeating the phrase “She is coming.” He would like to ask them who, but if he starts talking to them he knows Yasha will become even more worried about him than he already is.

Luckily it does not take him too long to figure out who they’re talking about; he’s only ever seen five of them, the blonde one not among them, which means she is coming. For what purpose he does not know, unsure if he wants to find out.

With each day that passes the others ominous warning comes more and more frequently. It makes him paranoid and the few hairs left on the back of his neck stand on end. Charon keeps close to Yasha, afraid to let him out of his sight. The blonde one is unpredictable, unknown to him as he has not seen her since they were sold in an auction nearly 200 years ago. Charon explains his worry to Yasha.

“If she’s coming to see you then doesn’t that mean she broke free of her brainwashing too? She shouldn’t be a danger to us then.”

Charon exhales heavily before replying.

“I do not think so. I haven’t seen her in nearly two centuries; for all we know she is on her way to kill me. No matter what her reason for looking for me is she is still dangerous. If you see her and I am not with you I want you to get as far away from her as possible.”

Yasha does not seem convinced but he promises Charon anyway.

\---

It all comes to a head when he sees her walking through the town gates toward him one early morning. Her smile is as sharp as a knife but she makes no move for the gun holstered on her hip. Charon eyes her warily, but says nothing, waiting for her to either speak or attack.

The blonde speaks when she comes to a stop a few feet away from him.

“I have a proposition for you, Red.”

\---

“Whoa wait. So this woman you said you barely even knew from 200 years ago comes waltzing into town and asks you to leave with her and you’re going? Just like that?”

Charon knows he didn’t explain this properly, knows how this must sound, with the hurt and betrayed way Yasha is looking at him. The ghoul rests his palms on the human’s cheeks, making him look at him as he tries to explain this again. He doesn’t remember words being so difficult before.

“No, not just like that. I am helping her track down the ones who did this to us, who made us, and make sure that they never do anything like this to anyone else. If our makers are no longer living then we’ll destroy anything that is left of their work.”

“Then I’m coming with you.”

“No.”

Yasha’s jaw tenses and shoulders square, ready to argue with him. Great, he keeps messing this up.

“Yasha, I may be helping her with this, but I do not trust her. I do not trust her to be around you. She is far more unstable than I am and I will not put you at risk.”

Charon runs his fingers through Yasha’s hair and that seems to get the human to relent.

“Fine, but I don’t trust her with you either, for the record. Since I can’t go with you you’re taking Dogmeat,” Yasha says, pressing a finger against Charon’s mouth. “You’re taking Dogmeat with you. I’ll feel better if she’s with you so you at least have someone watching your back.”

The ghoul gives him a faint smile (he’d rather Dogmeat stay with Yasha, but he’s been learning to compromise) before pressing their lips together.

“As you wish.”

\---

The blonde doesn’t give him her name and he doesn’t give her his. Neither is offended by this, though she does seem amused when she sees Dogmeat is joining them.

“Your contract holder sending a watchdog to keep an eye on you?”

“No one holds my contract,” is his clipped reply.

If his response has surprised or upset her it doesn’t show on her face and her own response is just to shrug before walking on.

Charon takes one last look at Megaton before he follows the blonde north and feels like this will be the last time he sees it for a very, very long time.

\---

A couple weeks into their journey and Charon feels his heart stop when Three Dog announces over the radio in the bar of some small town they’ve stopped in that the Lone Wanderer has been missing for a week and wondering if anyone has seen him. He only realizes that he’s gotten up from his chair and heading for the door when Dogmeat nips at his fingers.

He stops and looks at her, then at the blonde. She’s looking at him with a calculating gaze and it unnerves him. Charon scowls at her when the blonde smiles at him when she notices him looking. 

The blonde knows.

If she didn’t before she does now and Charon is cursing himself in his thoughts. He sits himself back down at their table, still scowling at her while she laughs into her drink before she tries to get him to verbally spill the beans, as if his reaction to the radio wasn’t enough. 

Charon does learn something from this though.

The blonde enjoys finding people’s weak points and then digging in hard.

\---

Three days after that Three Dog announces that the Lone Wanderer had been spotted leaving the Outcasts’ outpost, apparently looking a little grim but no worse for wear other than that.

Charon lets out a quiet sigh of relief, trying to be subtle. The sharp grin on the blonde’s face tells him he was anything but.

\---

The blonde tries to coax information out of him from time to time; as far as Charon can tell it’s like a game to her. He never tells her anything. Dogmeat seems to tolerate the blonde; keeps an eye on her but never actually gets close, never allows her to get close either.

\---

They’re too far away from D.C. now so the radios don’t pick up GNR and Charon no longer has at least some way of knowing how Yasha is doing.

Dogmeat whines and places her head on his thigh, as if she’d realized this too.

\---

“You know, it’d be disgustingly cute how much you’re pining for that human of yours if it weren’t for how tragic it’s gonna end.”

“What.”

“You heard me. You two might love each other now, but how long did you think he was going to put up with the flashbacks, the nightmares? Please, don’t look so surprised. As much as it pains me to admit it, I had nightmares too when I first broke the conditioning. You should be prepared though for the inevitability of him moving on if he hasn’t already.”

“Fuck off.”

“Ooo, touchy.”

“What makes you so sure that he’d leave? You don’t even know him.”

“Red, I know how fickle humans can be. They say they’ll wait or that they’ll stay, but they never do.”

“Someone sounds bitter. Whoever it was that left you probably didn’t leave because of your nightmares.”

“Fuck off, Red.”

\---

They’d been zig-zagging through most of Maryland and Delaware for the better part of two months, following leads of where the hazmats are located (neither remembers where, as it was part of their programming to not know, a part imbedded so deep they can’t quite shake it).

Currently they’re chasing a lead in Pennsylvania, some distance from Pittsburgh (“We’re not going anywhere near the Pitt. We were slaves once already and I’d rather not become one again, thanks”) and he keeps catching himself looking towards the ruined city, can’t seem to shake the feeling of… of something. It seems Dogmeat is experiencing the same something since she’ll periodically gaze towards the Pitt and whine, but she continues to stick close to Charon.

Eventually their next destination is New York and they leave Pennsylvania, and the Pitt’s skyline, behind.

\---

One night in New Jersey Charon finally decides to ask the question that has been bugging him for several months now.

“Why me?”

“Why you, what?”

“Why ask me to help you? There were at least five others to choose from, so why me?”

“Because the five others are dead.”

“But how do you know?”

“I know because I killed them myself.”

Charon looks at her, waiting for her to elaborate. She gives a very put upon sigh, rolling her eyes.

“One of them I killed when I was still under contract and the other four I killed when they refused to help me.”

“So if I had refused–”

“If you had refused,” she purrs with a sly smile, “I would’ve used that human of yours as leverage. Lucky for you that it hadn’t come to that.”

Charon can see the others standing around her, the light of the campfire causing shadows to dance across their marred and rotten faces, their dead eyes never leaving her as they whisper, “Beware, beware. She’ll never let you leave alive.”

\---

They finally found it. After two and a half years they finally fucking found it. This can finally end and then he can go home to Yasha and wash his hands of this whole mess.

The part of the complex that is above ground looks dilapidated but stable enough to not collapse on them. They clear the first floor easily enough; there’s no one up here but them and the dog. It is when the find the hatch that leads to the lower levels where the real work begins.

The blonde flashes him a razor sharp grin before descending first.

\---

Everything in the lower levels are all ferals; a few of the hazmats and guards, all easily destroyed. When they get to the final room, a control center of some kind, they come across the only sentient ghoulified hazmat.

The hazmat looks like he might say something, mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water, but the blonde ends him before he can.

She turns to Charon, unsettling smile on her face as she says in an overly sweet voice, “Looks like this is the end of the road, Red” before she lunges at him.

\---

Once Charon and Dogmeat are a good distance away from the complex, the ghoul presses down on the detonator, and they both watch as the building collapses in on itself, finally looking like the tomb it has always been.

He had found their records, the list of names of all the people they’d taken. Of all the people they’d destroyed and on that list he had found his name. One look at it and he knew it had been his. 

But that’s just the thing, it had been, it was no longer his.

That name on the list belonged to a man who no longer exists, a man who lived before the bombs dropped, a man who had been a soldier in Anchorage; a man who had died in those basements and became something else.

Charon allows for a moment of silence for the blonde one, the others, the ones who had died during the trials, and for the Anchorage soldier he once was, all finally laid to rest.

When the moment passes he turns around and leaves with Dogmeat.

\---

Charon gets into Megaton early in the morning, the sun just barely over the horizon. The town seems to have grown since he’s been gone, which is unsurprising, considering how much order and stability had been brought to the capital wasteland within recent years.

The ghoul stops in his tracks when his eyes lands on their house. It looks the same as it had when he left. His thoughts begin to race because what if the blonde had been right? What if Yasha had moved on? Unsure of what to do, Dogmeat made the decision for him. She went racing around the corner barking happily.

“Dogmeat?”

He sounded the same, and when Yasha came racing around the corner he looked the same too, albeit with a few new scars.

Their eyes locked onto the other’s face, taking note of the slight changes of each other, and then Yasha’s face lit up with a bright smile as the human pulled the ghoul into a tight embrace. Charon can feel the smile being pressed into his skin as Yasha tucks his face into the crook of Charon’s neck and tells the ghoul “I missed you.”

He presses his mouth against the top of Yasha’s head and holds him back just as fiercely.

It is good to be home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> haha wow i'm sorry it took me this long to finally finish this up but every time i tried to write this last chapter i ended up not liking it so then i'd have to start over (tbh i have mixed feelings about how this final chapter turned out but it's the one i hated the least so hopefully it'll be fine). 
> 
> thanks for reading

**Author's Note:**

> the others in the tags refer to the group of people that Charon was trained with and the hazmats are the ones who were responsible for it.
> 
> one of the others might show up later on who knows


End file.
